


In This Haze of Gray and Gold

by Domimagetrix



Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Mild references to mature concepts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 15:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17082530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: Exhaustively experienced artist and performer seeks an appreciative audience, and reflects on his work.





	In This Haze of Gray and Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Geena (Trindine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trindine/gifts).



                                                           Prologue

 

Captivate  
[ **kap** -tuh-veyt]

 

verb (used with object), cap·ti·vat·ed, cap·ti·vat·ing.  
Definition - to attract and hold the attention or interest of, as by beauty or excellence; enchant.  
(example) _Their bright eyes and curly hair captivated him_.

  
Archaic -  to capture; subjugate.

 

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Long footsteps brushed stone. The hem of a robe erased foot-shaped depressions left in the thin layer of dust. Paper rattled, clenched in a wildly gesticulating hand.

From a dimly-lit corner of the room, eyes marked all these things with an inscrutable, green-gold gaze.

“And what say you, good fellows? Men and women of breeding, aristocracy, the elite? The empire falls around us. Artillery has erased our outer walls, our shrines are rubble, and the most esteemed of our priests has barricaded himself in his rectory, shouting mad, lustful things about our god. The constabulary has joined the ranks of thieves and gutted the coffers. What do we do, my good, refined fellows? Shall we host a gala? Join the cannibalistic pillaging? Take up the sword? I’ve already aired my suggestion through the rectory door, but it would seem candles serve poorly for a papal libido.”

Sliske whirled in place, facing the eyes that’d been fastened to him for the past half hour. “Or is it beneath us to succumb? How far does good breeding carry us? Tell me that we should die with dignity. That we should serve, in this empty corridor and in the fresh corpse of our tyranny, as the equally empty last cry for discipline. Tell me that riches alone did not elevate us.”

The glow from the green-gold eyes shuttered briefly with a blink. Silence.

Sliske slapped the play on his desk with an exasperated noise. “Come off it, Ahrim. If anyone at all could appreciate a tasteful blend of melodramatic sanctimoniousness and lust, it should be you.”

The silence from the corner became hostile.

Sliske _hmphed,_ slumping dejectedly into his chair, and waved Ahrim off. “Go haunt something. You’re a miserable audience.”

Ahrim maintained his silence, but the hasty sound of a hand snatching a staff from its resting place - and footsteps too speedy for composed or even purposeful locomotion - were answer enough.

Sliske made a rude hand gesture, then paused, surprised. What he’d done had fallen out of favor ages ago, but muscle memory had slid the thumb-and-index-finger signal off a shelf in his recollection and deployed it with practiced ease. He eyed his own hand, then the hallway where Ahrim’s dim outline receded, and repeated the gesture at the wight’s back. Purposefully.

“No respect for revolutionary artists putting a spin on history.” He barked a laugh. “And you a bloody clergyman.”

Turning back to the play, he sighed. The momentum was gone, half-formed dialogue particles floating in his mind like dust in a glass of water, none of it interesting.

_When you’re not sure where to go, it pays to look back at how far you’ve come._

Sliske smiled. He drew a large tome toward him, opened a page, dipped his quill, and scribbled the thought down on the first empty page.

Reslotting the quill, he sat back, fanning the paper until the ink dried. He slid a claw tip between two older pages, perhaps a quarter way through the book, and turned them.

And again, and again, eyeing his thoughts put to page, sampling the sensory associations that came with each memory.

Dawn found him later, hunched unthinkingly against the beginnings of a backache, still pouring through the written record of his past.

 

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

  * _Entirely too much pomp and circumstance at these weekly get-togethers. Prominent heads and figureheads mingling beforehand, listening to a dreary sermon during, then fracturing into little gossip clusters once Azzanadra’s shuffled loose the pontificating coil._



_Even Zamorak’s at a loss to stay away._

_As with most of these “scandals,” I have a perfectly good excuse. I was bored! Or, more accurately, I was_ out of my mind _with boredom. It always follows the same trend - Azzy talks, Azzy runs out of meaningful things to say, Azzy continues talking. Then he retreats to his stark, dimly-lit office with some protesting apostate in tow for a good punishment._

_So I ran a little experiment, yes I did. I stayed close to that office door. When the yelling started, I bolted right for the other side of the room. Out the exit I went, poof!_

_And damned if half that gathering didn’t follow right at my heels. It was a delightful display of herd mentality! A singleton perceives danger, panics, and the rest mindlessly pursue him without knowing if there’s any justification._

_Say what you will, but I think there’s a book on this phenomenon somewhere in the future._

 

_……………_

 

 

  * _Managed a bit of fun with the World Guardian today. Seems they don’t care for interruptions while bathing._



_Hmph. You’d think I’d never made a surprise appearance around them before. I wonder if it’s the water? Or the nudity? Probably the nudity, though I can’t imagine why. It didn’t bother me one bit._

_And I’m hardly unpleasant to look at._

 

_………………_

 

 

  * _I see mating hasn’t done much for Zamorak’s disposition. If he gets any more puckered I’m afraid he’ll start a revolution just to ease the pressure._



[The lower half of the page bears a wide streak of what looks like dried gray blood, as though someone had smeared the outside edge of a very large hand with it to mark its passage across the page while writing.]

 

  * _Addendum: let the record show I absolutely called it._



 

 

_………………_

 

 

  * _Of all the… “invention.” I’ve been doing this for centuries! Sometimes I attain levels even I scarcely comprehend. They’re cordially invited to join me - if they can._



 

 

_………………_

 

 

  * _Simpering little wretch of a man. Had his expertise less potential for good use, I’d have dismissed Gregorovic as soon as those dull, predictable, self-serving pleas fell out of his mouth._



_“I’m dying,” he says. They’re all dying, all the time. No three consecutive days pass without some procession of mourners hefting a coffin to the local religious outlet, people crying, a dreary little ritual forgotten two days later. Meaningless. And a waste. The only things separating most of them from insects are size and capacity for large-scale mischief. Which, in fairness, does make them fun._

_But, back to Gregorovic. A doctor. Expertise. And, since he’s willing, I can transform him with a bit more craftsmanship than your average wight._

_I’ll have to do something about that whiny, perpetually miserable tone, though._

_Seems like a man in need of a good laugh._

 

_…………….._

 

 

  * _This fixation on the World Guardian must end. I can’t go on like this. They’re already heaped upon by gross levels of adoration._



_By gods, even. And not one of them has ever seen that hair scattered across a pillow, or the way their fingers twitch in their sleep._

_All that, and they know nothing. At all._

 

_…………….._

 

 

  * _A note to self: never, ever ask Wahisietel to list your flaws in jest. He will do it. At exhausting length. While blowing pipe smoke in your face. Angry pipe smoke._



_Also: never do so after orchestrating an argument between him and Azzanadra._

 

_………………_

 

 

  * _Suggest during high-pressure operations - requiring TOP-TIER acting, no less - that you’re a scalie, and you’ll never hear the end of it._



 

 

_………………_

 

_Kingdoms, empires, large-scale application of dogmatic structures, they all fall if permitted time enough. They build, hit a glorious crescendo of decadence, then collapse under the weight of either hubris or stagnation._

_And, inevitably, some wit points this out on the eve of destruction, every time, without fail, and always in a tone that suggest they’re quite satisfied with their brilliance rather than reiterating someone else’s observation from an age past._

_And… AND! Their works are studied by the next rising behemoth, lauded as wisdom, even as that behemoth declares it’ll never succumb to the same fate. Not this time, not ever._

_Every damned time._

 

_……………...._

 

 

  * _Somehow - and I’m not certain by what means he’s managed to avoid it - Akrisae hasn’t lost the look of youth. His skin’s adopted the sallow color, the eyes are as they’ve always been in my undead, but he does not rot._



_I can’t suss it out._

_Not for the first time, I wish I could confer with Mizzarch. I suppose I could beg an ear of Zemouregal, but the quality of what he raises hasn’t changed as long as he’s been alive. Mizzarch’s architecture evolved._

_The mechanism was exactly the same, I’m sure of it. Granted, he wasn’t my intended target, but…_

_No. No, absolutely not._

_...but it would’ve, wouldn’t it? It would’ve been the same with the human I was truly after._

_I’ve never researched a prospective acquisition so thoroughly. Never at this length or with this level of dedication._

_I’m going to chalk it up to experience honing my talent._

_It wasn’t the want. It_ wasn’t.

 

_………………_

 

 

  * _I should compose a love letter to Zamorak from Enakhra and deliver it. Just to see what happens._



 

 

_…………….._

 

 

  * __S_ he’s undergone too much change for me to reverse. I don’t know that I could make a wight of her at this point. The connective fulcrum is absent. The Realm has altered her in some fundamental, immunizing way._



_It doesn’t matter. She stays, willingly. Speaks to passerby in that dreary, subdued marketplace in Draynor. And some come to me of their own volition at her words._

_If I didn’t know what the inevitable outcome of them was, I do think I would command a mighty impressive empire. Doesn’t seem as though garnering a following requires much work on my end. Set one in motion, and that one accumulates more. A pyramid, but from the top down._

_I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little tempted._

_Only a little._

 

_…………….._

 

 

  * _Case study in disappointing Wahisietel: 23,215th installment. Details unimportant._



 

 

_…………….._

 

 

  * _The little portmanteau won’t leave my mind. “Zaronadra.” It plagues me. It’s perfect. Too perfect to keep to myself, but who would listen? Who would appreciate it most?_



_AHA! The World Guardian. Surely there’s some refined sense of humor in there behind all those heinous puns._

 

_………………_

 

 

  * _“Seduce the guards,” says the World Guardian. And what zest! Of all the possible suggestions, they choose seduction. They think first of seduction, and charge me with its execution._



_Keep on, little minx. I haven’t forgotten which you preferred I do._

 

_………………_

 

Sliske closed the book. Smiled.

“No captive audience. I know just who’ll appreciate my work.”

Standing, stretching, he lifted the play and tucked it underneath his arm, then called shadows from beneath the table and shelves to coalesce around him.

“They always do.”


End file.
